Edu_RSS
Rants 'n' Raves: Mass Hypnosis
On a cheery note for the weekend readers comment on how technology is crippling the masses and the inability of Ipod users to communicate intellectually in today's Rants 'n' Raves. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 5:46 p.m..
Exim configuration for Mailman with Redhat RPMs
I’ve been working on installing Mailman at our institution. It’s been interesting and fun (I’ve been working particularly on altering the default design), but we ran into a problem that had me scratching my head for the past couple of days. When I tried to send e-mail to a list, I got the following error [...] From
Serious Instructional Technology on April 14, 2006 at 4:45 p.m..
the significance of MySpace
While MySpace has skyrocketed to success beyond any of the other social technologies on the web, too few folks in the industry talk about it, participate in it or otherwise pay attention to it…. mostly because it’s particularly populated by teens, musicians and other folks who are nowhere near connected to the tech industry. Much of what’s discussed is the culture of fear put forward by the mass media. This is quite unfortunate because there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on there. At AAAS this week, i had the opportunity to pr From
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
AirTroductions
I spend too much time in airports and i can’t imagine i’m alone in this crowd. While i often like to get work done, i also like interesting interactions… or at least sane seatmates. Social software should be able to help but there are so many barriers to this. You need to articulate too much and who has time? Still, as broken as they are, i’m interested in exploring the tools that might l From
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
An Adoption Strategy for Social Software in the Enterprise
Perhaps the greatest competency
Socialtext has gained over the past three years is fostering adoption of social software. Adoption matters most for IT to have value. It should be obvious that if only a third of a company uses a portal, then the value proposition of that portal is two thirds less than it’s potential. But for social software, value is almost wholy generated by the contributions of the group and imposed adoption is marked for failure.
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
The Experimental Wing of Political Philsophy
Clay may end up posting something about pattern languages for moderations systems here, but Nat has great
notes from his talk at Etech and I couldn’t help but lift this quote: This is the direction that the conversation around social software is taking. Hobbes would say that Dave had the right and all was good. Rousseau would reply, “no he didn’t, software systems that don’t allow the users to fight back are immoral.” Social software is the From
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
Clash of Uncivilizations
Jon Turow passed on an
open letter to Mark Zuckerberg in the Daily Princetonian. Facebook recently expanded from college to
high school, resulting in a clash of uncivilizations: …If we really wanted to, we could steer clear of the groups by just avoiding the high school profiles. But we can’t ignore it when they post on our walls. And my god, do they post. Unfortunately, they don’t underst From
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?
People keep asking me “What went wrong with Friendster? Why is MySpace any different?” Although i’ve danced around this issue in every talk i’ve given, i guess i’ve never addressed the question directly. So i sat down to do so tonite. I meant to write a short blog post, but
a full-length essay came out. Rather than make you read this essay in blog form (or via your RSS reader), i partitioned it off to a printable webpage. If you are building social technologies From
Corante: Social Software on April 14, 2006 at 2:50 p.m..
This feed has been discontinued, please unsubscribe. [2006-04-14]
This feed has been discontinued and you should unsubscribe. The feed reader you are using does not support standard HTTP mechanisms for announcing that a feed has been discontinued so you will receive this message until you manually unsubscribe. Please contact the provider of your feed reader and encourage them to support the use of HTTP 410 response codes. Your feed reader identified itself as "Edu_RSS/0.2 libwww-perl/5.79" From
Seb Schmoller's Fortnightly Mailing Home Page on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
OPLANet
The OPLAN Foundation wants to be a central watering hole for those enthusiastic about the possibilities of "open public local access networks," from wifi hotposts to city-wide fiber. The site points to www.ftthcouncil.org and www.wifi-forum.com as organizations working on elements of this; OPLAN wants to be the "canopy." Any organization working toward spreading connectivity bottom up has my support. (Note: If the KKK adopts open wifi as a plank in its platform, I will regret that sentence.) Perhaps you wonder how I, as a member of the board of advisors of FON, can also support open wifi hotsp From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Steve Johnson's next draft
Steve Johnson has finished a draft of his new book, The Ghost Map. It sounds like it will be wonderful...what Michael Crichton might write if he were as talented a writer as Steve. [Tags: books steven_johnson]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Wikipedia's categories
Jakob Voss has published a paper on Wikipedia's category system and how it compares with tag-based folksonomies and the Dewey Decimal Classification system. At the time he did the research (Jan., 2006), there were 923,196 articles in the Gnlish version, and a full 94% of them had at least one category tag. There were a 91,502 unique categories. Then the paper gets statistical beyond my understanding, but that's my problem, not the paper's... [Tags: wikipedia tagging taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Outdoors in Orlando
I'm giving the closing keynote at the Digital Insight customer conference in Orlando today, staying at the continentally-misnamed Royal Pacific Hotel — there's no ocean nearby, and if there were, it wouldn't be the Pacific. I got in late last night and I leave this afternoon, so I don't have a lot of (= any) time to see the sights, but this morning I made the mistake of taking a 6 a.m. walk along the river. Or is it a river simulacrum? It was a mistake only because I find the artificiality of the environment so disquieting. The grass has... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Library research ... and MLK as a bigot
Yesterday I talked at a meeting of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, a library association in Ohio. (Librarians are so much fun to hang out with. Plus, library associations are one of the few groups I address where there are more women than women, except, of course, when the family is home for dinner.) I heard two presentations, both excellent. One was by Carole Palmer who teaches in the grad program in libary science the U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Palmer has been researching how scholars in the humanities and sciencies actually use resources when they work. Among other findings From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
The shame of Iraq
Ryan Lizza at The New Republic writes: The centrist revolt against the war in Iraq is caused by shame. Americans are angry at Bush not for toppling Saddam without U.N. permission, but for turning Iraq into a symbol of humiliation for the United States. The analogy is not so much LBJ and Vietnam, but Carter and the hostage crisis. It's not the neo-imperialism. It's the embarrassing incompetence. Interesting. Sounds plausible, but I have no way of telling if it's true or not. [Tags: bush iraq ryan_lizza tnr politics]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Network book
Farrar, Straus and Giroux are publishing Robert Frenay's Pulse (about systems that model themselves on living things) as a "network book." It seems to be Web 2.0 compliant: It's available via RSS, is redistributable, and open to discussion. It'll be interesting to see how readable it is in this form, but it is certainly bold. [Tags: pulse robert_frenay books web20]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
McAfee acquires SiteAdvisor
McAfee acquired SiteAdvisor last week. I'm a big fan of SiteAdvisor (Disclosure: I'm also a stock-owning advisor), and I'm pleased that it seems like McAfee is going to keep it going in its current direction as a free service and a good citizen.(I'm an advisor because I feel this way, not vice versa.) If you haven't downloaded the SiteAdvisor browser plugin, I recommend that you do so. I use its evaluations at least several times a day. [Tags: siteadvisor mcafee spyware malware]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Microsoft writes bill for Oklahoma authorizing wholesale spying
According to the Oklahoma Gazette, the state legislature has passed a bill that Microsoft helped write that gives vendors of software the right to check around you computer, delete files they consider unauthorized, and turn you into the local authorities if they don't like the way your computer smells. This is all being done to keep you secure. Yes, you can refuse to agree to the end user license agreement, but more likely you'll just click on it without reading the fine print. And if you refuse to sign the EULA, you don't get to use the software. OK not... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
You can't beat folk
Woody Guthrie: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin' it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." "Written by Guthrie in the late 1930s on a songbook distributed to listeners who wanted the words to his recordings [Thanks to Mike Saunders for the link.] [Tags: copyright woody_guthrie digital_rights]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Digital Libraries via D-Lib Mag
D-Lib Magazine has a special issue on digital libraries. I've just started reading it, but so far it's fascinating. (Thanks to Kurt Starsinic for pointing it out.) [Tags: taxonomy everything_is_miscellaneous EverythingIsMiscellaneous libraries]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Message not this medium
AdAge has run a guest column of mine trying to explain to marketers why they shouldn't look at the blogosphere as a good place to "message" people. [Tags: marketing blogs]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Murray Waas is Woodward
Jay Rosen makes the case that Murray Waas of the National Journal is doing the job Bob Woodward got rich and famous doing — digging out the truth behind big stories — and that Woodward now is in fact part of the biggest story around these days: How the Bush administration played the press to get us to go to war. [Tags: jay_rosen murray_waas bob_woodward news media iraq bush]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Sen. Alllan Lichtman (D-MySpace)
Allan Lichtman has extended his campaign for the Senate into MySpace. I appreciate his willingness to appear somewhat goofy. Seriously. MySpace hasn't succeeded because it's so damn dignified. (Thanks to Thomas Vander Wal for the pointer) [Tags: allan_lichtman politics myspace]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
Republic phone jammers
If you want the scoop on the Phone Jammer Gate (ok, so it's not going to catch on), take a look at Betsy Devine's blog these days. For example, she surfaces a good question from John DiStaso... [Tags: politics betsy_devine john_distaso dirty_tricks bush]... From
Joho the Blog on April 14, 2006 at 2:49 p.m..
What to Teach--A little harder now (Bill Wong* Part III)
Summary: Bill Wong's parents and I mull over what Bill should learn next. I've just finished a conference with the teacher. Now we explore the same topic with Bill's parents.The parental take on the "short and sweet" is probably neither short nor particularly sweet to any of the others involved in the question of what and how to teach.[See my earlier entries in the What to Teach sequence of entries. The first entry
is here , and the second
Connectivity: Spike Hall's RU Weblog on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Recommendation Systems and Social Networking
Digital Music News
reports on Pandora's deal with Friendster. I talked about this sort of combination a little on Berkman's site
last week and want to say a bit more here.The connection between these two tools goes in both direction. Chris Anderson is
right that my friends won't necessarily produce good recommendations. But From
A Copyfighter's Musings on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
GUBA and the MPAA's Usenet suits
I wonder if
Guba has anything to do with the
MPAA's recent Usenet suits. Guba indexes Usenet video and is accessible via a browser. You can then watch video using Flash in your browser or download the video file. The service costs $14.95 per month.Guess who probably wants a cut? If the MPAA is starting to get concerned about YouTube having advertising, then this has got to concern them. Guba certainly isn't as popular a From
A Copyfighter's Musings on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
More Blurring of Subscription and A La Carte
I recently
wrote about the possible blurring between a la carte and subscription music services. News.com
reports that iTunes will start offering Multi-Pass, which lets you pay a $9.99 subscription per month to get all 16 episodes of the Daily Show shown during that period. Otherwise, you can buy each episode a la carte for $1.99. Some might see this as a shift in Apple's strategy, moving them towa From
A Copyfighter's Musings on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Welcome Back, Bloglines Readers (maybe)
If you read me through Bloglines, you probably haven't seen a post in quite some time - at least, they haven't been showing up in my aggregator, even though I've been posting all the while. The problem seems to be fixed now. Hopefully this blog will soon be moving to new blogging software and better server in the near future. Stay tuned. From
A Copyfighter's Musings on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Smart Mobs Student Edition
MySpace has been in the news again, this time because of the role it played in organizing the recent protests across the country (but primarily in California and Arizona) against the immigration bill. The first thing that jumps out to me, at least is that MySpace is now officially a “social networking site,” not just [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Closing the Divide
Some good news from the New York Times: African-Americans are steadily gaining access to and ease with the Internet, signaling a remarkable closing of the “digital divide” that many experts had worried would be a crippling disadvantage in achieving success. Civil rights leaders, educators and national policy makers warned for years that the Internet was bypassing blacks [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
RSS Experiments
I love Bloglines, but this article in TechCrunch has me looking at the alternatives. One that I really want to like is Rojo, which has all sorts of social Web goodness built into it. I LOVE the fact that I can tag individual posts…kind of like a built in del.icio.us. Of course, every tag has [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Welcome Washington Post Readers…
How much fun is it to say that? If you’re here because of today’s series of stories in the Washington Post on educators blogging, let me take this opportunity to welcome you to the “edublogosphere” and to a really great conversation about how blogs and wikis and podcasts and other Web publishing tools are changing what [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
MySpace Not Cool Anymore…
Just when we started figuring out exactly what the heck MySpace really is, now it’s destined for the trash heap. At least that’s according to some of Jeff Utecht’s students: �It became something you HAD to do, people were going crazy, and you had to write something or people would say �Yeah, you haven�t written anything [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Cool 7th Grade Science Blogs
So this 7th grade “Exploring Our Dynamic Earth” blog (with the very appropriate tag line of “Using blogs to learn”) is an interesting example of how RSS can be woven into the work. The front matter is all done by placing feeds from a host of class blogs and a few science news feeds (including [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Higher Ed BloggerCon
The Higher Ed BloggerCon seemed like a pretty cool idea when it was first announced and it’s absolutely fulfilling my expectations, through Day 3 at least. It’s a month long event that features two screencasted presentations a day, and it kicked off this week with the teaching strand. I’ve learned something from everything that’s been [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Ed Week on Wikis
Education Week is running a story titled “Educators Experiment With Student-Written ‘Wikis’: Malleable, Open-ended Web Sites Seen as Aids to Collaborative Learning” that highlights some of the work being done by the likes of Tim Lauer, Paul Allison and others. Here’s a snip that I thought was pretty interesting: “You can�t do the cookie-cutter essay anymore, [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Reinvention–Chapter 3: Moving Day/Spring Break
This isn’t quite as earth shattering as Chapter 2, but the personal reinvention continues with the end, finally, of my Manila blog and the beginning of my new space served up by James Farmer at Edublogs. I have mostly good things to say about my three-plus years with Manila, but I’ve just had Word Press [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:48 p.m..
Welcome to Weblogg-ed Word Press Style
Whew…we made it! It took most of the day yesterday for the import over from Manila to build. I have to say it was kind of interesting watching old posts from 2, 3, even 4 years ago scroll by. A weird time machine effect. Anyway, looks like the site is about 90% rebuilt, but there is [...] From
weblogged News on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Spring 2006 CM Pros Summit
I've just extended my trip to San Francisco at the end of April so I can participate in the Spring 2006 CM Pros Summit. It looks to be a good few days, and I'll giving a closing keynote on day... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Ajax and your CMS
Jonathan Downes and Joe Walker have written an article on Ajax and CMS products. To quote: For the Web CMS world, Ajax offers the possibility for a better user experience for content authors as well as site visitors. But what... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Measure twice, cut once: content management metrics
Brian Manning & Caleb Brown have written an article that discusses common content management metrics. To quote: Often, when companies choose to implement a content management (CM) strategy they do so in an attempt to alleviate the operational inefficiencies associated... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Rethinking EIA: becoming information ecologists
Rob Fay has written an interesting article on rethinking enterprise IA. To quote: This post attempts to rethink EIA and argues that information architecture need not be constrained to designing structures and managing content as it relates to the Web... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Accessibility tips for website construction
We all know accessibility is important, but precisely how does one make a website or intranet more accessible? There is a great deal of hype on this topic and a lot of discussion too, yet vagueness and confusion persist. Web... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Obtain search in your CMS?
Organisations are looking for a wide range of capabilities when selecting a new content management system (CMS), and search is often one of the desired features. Almost every site requires a search tool, whether it’s a website or intranet. In... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
CMS vendors are evaluating us
When organisations are looking for a new content management system (CMS), the selection process is designed to evaluate all the offerings in the marketplace to find the product that is the best fit to the organisation's needs. Requirements are documented,... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Information Online 2007 (Sydney)
At the request of the conference organisers, I'm just spreading the word about the upcoming Information Online 2007 to be held in Sydney on January 30 - February 1, 2007. The call for papers is still out, with the due... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Ten questions about content management systems
David Moore has written an article that answers ten questions about CMS products. The ten questions are: OK, so what is a Content Management System? What are the benefits? OK, I'm sold – how much will it cost? But the... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Enterprise portals: tip of which iceberg?
Janus Boye has written an article on enterprise portals, discussing the good, bad and ugly. To quote: Today's enterprise sets ambitious goals for content and service integration. Following nearly ubiquitous advice from the trade press and conference circuit, IT departments... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
List of intranet blogs
I've just added a list of intranet weblogs to the Intranet Review Toolkit. It's not a long list so far (only 9 entries), so if you know of others, please send across your suggestions.... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Reinventing the intranet
Jon Udell has written an article on the use of social software on intranets. To quote: Shared bookmarking, coupled with tagging, is another piece of low-hanging fruit. Sprinkling Web 2.0 pixie dust won't solve every problem, but the benefits of... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Us versus them - vocabulary makes a difference
Jane McConnell has written a blog entry discussing the vocabulary of global intranets. To quote: Vocabulary used when talking about intranets reveals a lot about an organisation's model and approach to becoming more international, or global. Which raises the question:... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Don't forget to add the tax(onomy)
Cathy McKnight has written an article on intranet taxonomies. To quote: Now with that said, you still ask "What do I need a taxonomy for?" In a word -- savings -- savings of time, money and effort. These savings were... From
Column Two on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Rick Reis's Tomorrow's Professor Blog
Rick Reis just announced the availability of his new blog this week. I refer instructors to Rick's Tomorrow's Professor
archive and listserv regularly because it's a rich source of information about teaching and learning in higher education. I'm pleased to see the appearance of his new weblog. _____JH _______ Folks: WE HAVE GONE LIVE!!! "The Tomorrow's Professor Blog" A place for discussion aboutteaching and learning
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Birkbeck University Digital Learning Project
The Birkbeck University Library in London is developing a digital learning project that facilitates information literacy and learning in specific subject areas with the use of learning objects (in Flash movies, pdf files, xhtml, and other formats). The project has made a fine start and is worth visiting. _____JH ______ "A Digital Repository is where you store any digital object, including learning objects. A Digital Repository helps preserve and assure a central place for all digital objects, so the learner can come back at any time to reuse and search for new resources." From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Houston CC Writing Center Resources
I've argued in several presentations that the use of learning objects in particular and online educational resources in general will not greatly expand in higher education until two trends fully develop: first, campus-based centers (such as learning/study centers, writing centers, math centers, and teaching centers) must facilitate and promote the use of online educational materials by instructors and students, and second, software packages to enable the easy creation and sharing of online materials must become more generally available From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Rollyo--Set Up a Customized Search
I've seen Rollyo mentioned in several blogs, but I'm passing along this review from Scott Leslie's EdTechPost because he includes his own Rollyo trial search to cover course management sites. It takes some time to develop a comprehensive Rollyo search but the labor seems worthwhile. I'm currently using
GoogleAlert and other tools to track online educational resources in HE, but can certaily benefit from a tool such as Rollyo. Use the About Rollyo and FAQ to get started with Rollyo, and enjoy browsing the customized search From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
2020--Future of Computing
This web focus issue of Nature contains interesting articles about the future of computing in science (available for free access in html and pdf files). Additionally, the article provides a wonderful interactive
timeline about the major computing advances of the last 50 years. _____ _____ "In the last two decades advances in computing technology, from processing speed to network capacity and the internet, have revolutionized the way scientist From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Librarian's Guide to Institutional Repositories
I'm passing along this resource that was reported in Peter Suber's Open Access News. Institutional repositories are designed to store the academic products of a university or college (including research, theory, and teaching resources). Some institutional repositories contain materials that will be of use as instructional resources; they constitute another important sub-domain within the universe of instructional repositories. _____JH ______
Intro to IRs for librarians. Margaret J. Pickton and Joanna From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
UNESCO Wiki on Open Educational Resources
This Wiki is a working site designed to facilitate the development of a research agenda for open educational resources. "This site is a place where members of the IIEP Open Educational Resources Community can work together on questions, issues and documents. Over time we can build this site together." The site contains some useful links
About Open Educational Resources. Since the wiki is newly created and still in development don't be surprised to find some empty pages. ______JH From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Univ. of Minnesota Digital Media Center--Learning Objects
I continue to believe that the use of LOs will be best facilitated by local support from teaching and learning centers, instructional design centers, distance learning centers, and similar on-campus organizations. The local centers can encourage and support instructors in 1) building their own LOs and in 2) finding and using LOs from large repositories such as MERLOT. The University of Minnesota Digital Media Center provides some good examples. _____JH From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
The Demise of the 50% Rule
Now that the Dept. of Education has removed the 50% rule, universities in the United States are free to expand their online course numbers beyond their on-campus offerings. My institution, Eastern Oregon University, participated in a multi-year study by the DoE about the feasibility of making changes in the rule, consequently I'm very pleased to see the changes finally approved by congress. This article by Frank Tansey from the Campus Technology reflects on some of the "challenges and opportunities" posed by the revised rule. My own expectation is tha From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
MIT OpenCourseWare Project Five Year Anniversary
MIT celebrated the 5-year anniversary of the
OCW project with a news announcement in April. It's worth pausing to consider how fast the OCW project has become a movement to provide open course content from a number of universities around the world--all of which follow the MIT model. ____JH ______ "Five years ago today, in an unprecedented step toward making knowledge accessible worldwide, MIT announced it would make the materials for nearly all of its courses available on the Internet. Since then, MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) has fl From
EduResources--Higher Education Resources Online on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
3D face recognition from a single video frame
I have a constantly updated presentation about »The future of computing«. One chapter of it is about security and surveillance technology - the face recognition approach in particular. Two computer science students in Haifa, Israel, have
invented a face recognition method with a 3D scan. It can radically improve the success rate and it was even able to seperate them apart: they are twins. The problem is that this approach requires a database of 3D scans of the faces to be matched with the current samp From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Web 3.0?
While everyone is talking about AJAX and JavaScript there is a very old technology taking up steam that could replace the DOM+JavaScript approach: XUL. Look for example at
this application called »Songbird«. The problem with XUL has always been a lack of development tools.
XULrunner seems to fill a huge gap here. Anyway it seems that the web browser technology is set out to take over the standard user experience one day. Vendors will be able to deliver grown-up appl From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Media war
BBC reports that US secretary of offense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledges that the "war on terror" is primarily a struggle of ideas. He proposes the US propaganda machinery must be capable of fighting down the unfavourable news from offensive media with a "more effective 24-hour propaganda machine". Hm. I was thinking free press and freedom of speech is a core ingredient to freedom and democracy. Obviously it is not enough
to pay Iraqi From owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
The rediscovery of »function« in product design
The ACM IT magazine
publishes an article written by Andreas Pfeiffer titled »Why features don't matter anymore: The new laws of digital technology«. He lists ten fundamental rules for the age of user experience technology. The article begins with this: The iPod was never sold on the grounds of its technical merits: Apple hit a gold-mine by marketing a cool new way of integrating music in your life. Even when Apple announced the iPod with video, it presented it not as the best multi-media From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Which country to invade next?
Like Michael Moore once said: »If you want to bomb a country you should at least be able to point it on a map!«. I would add you should at least be able to name some kind of reason. Just
watch this video:
It's a little bit hard to see in the video: These people don't recognize the displaced country names on the map. Mayb From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
The unawareness of lack of skill
This appears to be a funny note, but actually it is really something ultimately true:
Unskilled and Unaware of It. Justin Kruger and David Dunning made several studies to support following concepts: 1. Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to objective criteria.2. Incompetent individuals will suffer from deficient metacognitive skills, in that they will be less able than their more competent peers to recognize competenc From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Webmonday ahead
There is another
»Webmontag« event ahead tomorrow in Cologne. There are around 54 people planning to attend right now (and another 26 more unsure). I think I need to walk over to Hallmackenreuther and issue a warning. From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
New seminar weblog
I started
a new weblog about the project seminar titled »Sound«. It's a seminar covering sound design, corporate sound, sound in film, sound art, etc.Related: From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
3rd webmonday/webmontag in Cologne went well
Yesterday the 3rd Webmonday in Cologne took place. Again we arranged the Hallmackenreuther for this get together, but this time they decided to put us in the cellar (which is a nice location for maybe 50 people, but not 70 or 80; see
the images). People start to get familiar with each other. I think I like that development very much. What I don't like is when the presentations take more than one hour alltogether or a single presentation lasts any longer than 10 minutes (including Q&A!). I took some time to ramp up the
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Access point distribution
Today during a train ride between Cologne and Aachen I let
MacStumbler scan vor access points that I passed by. During the 70km ride it catched signals of around 65 wireless LANs: Usually regular housing is only close to railways in cities. On the country site buildings are rather sparse. Taking these facts into account I'd suspect the average densitiy of access points in a city here is so high, that you probably would be in the reach of From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Learning & commerce
Nuvvo is a platform where teachers can add an online course and optionally sell enrollments. Nuvvo is free - but once the instructor charges money Nuvvo will keep an 8% commission of all enrollments sold. Besides of the fact that this is a really interesting business model, the Nuvvo web application is designed to be as simple and easy to use as possible.Related: From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Kinja.com
Somehow I missed the site Kinja.com completely: The about page says: Kinja is a weblog guide, collecting news and commentary from some of the best sites on the web. Visitors can browse items on topics, everything from food to sex. Or they can create a convenient personal digest, to track their favorite writers.Weblogs are much talked about, but still challenging to navigate for the average web user. Kinja is designed to bring weblog writers to a broader audience, by makin From
owrede_log on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
The Clear Channel Patent Smackdown
From Rolling Stone, comes this article, "
Clear Channel Limits Live CDs:" In the past few years, fans leaving some concerts have discovered a souvenir far better than a T-shirt: a live recording of the show they just attended. Bands including the Allman Brothers, moe. and Billy Idol have sold instant concert discs, and the Pixies and the Doors plan to launch similar programs this summer. The recording-and-burning company DiscLive estima From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Open Text Book
The
OpenTextBook link popped up on a few weblogs today, but none of them seemed to be the usual ed blog suspects, so here's the link. Or, rather, the link's a few words back. Basically, they're co-authoring a textbook online, using CVS (not the pharmacy) to check in the changes to the PDF manuscript. Appears to be a math textbook, but works like "algebra" frighten and confuse the English major in me, so I couldn't read much. I doubt the publishing giants are quaking in their boots, but it&ap From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Furl: Bookmarks Done Right
So for many years (as my old buds on the FutureCulture mailing list will attest) I've moaned about the problems I have with bookmarks (aka "favorites" if you prefer Microsoft branding). Most importantly, I hated the fact that my bookmarks on my work machine were separate from my bookmarks on my home machine. Why isn't this information hosted online so I can access it from anyplace. I've
tried various solutions over the years. Recently, a glimmer of hope came from a Mozil From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Time for the Switch Campaign
Regarding the recent announcement that the Apple Safari browser in the next generation of MacOS X will include an RSS aggregator, Dave Winer
notes:Bryan Bell has notes from MacRumors about the RSS capabilities of Safari. Apparently you can search the contents of the feeds. This is something Steve Gillmor has been asking for, for ages. Feedster on the Desktop. Of course it can only search the feeds you're subscribed to. Geez, what contemporary aggregator doesn't do this?!? From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
Google Gmail
What does a guy have to do to get an invite into the
Google Gmail beta? Sigh. Anticipation blows. UPDATE 11:29 AM: A big thank you to Anne Davis of
EduBlog Insights for the Google Gmail invite!! You rock, Anne!! UPDATE 07/17/04: Several people have posted comments here (which I have deleted) asking for a Gmail account. Sorry, but that's a waste of time. I don't have any to give out. You're treading dangerously close to
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:47 p.m..
The Personal Web
Or, "Why Furl, Lookout, and Google put the smackdown on Backflip, Outlook, and Yahoo" In a comment to my
recent post on
Furl, Scott Leslie of
Ed Tech Post responded:"FURL is cool enough, I guess, but I've been a bit surprised by the hype surrounding it, given that web-based bookmark managers have been around for a while now"Scott's right of course, and I've used From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Marathon
Oi. What have I gotten myself into? Yesterday, I signed up to run a marathon in January. I've never run more than about three or four miles at once. Daunting though it may be, I'm doing it through
Train to End Stroke, a marathon training team that raises funds for stroke research and education. Two years ago, my father survived a massive cerebellar stroke. That event changed my family life forever. I'm setting up a Marathon category here and may set up a separate marathon blog. From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Microsoft buys Lookout
Lookout, the search plug-in which I
wrote about announced today that they have been this week was
acquired by Microsoft. I'm hoping that this turns out to be a good thing but the fact that it appears to have been rolled into the MSN Search team instead of into the Office team is somewhat worrisome. From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Hiatus
If it hasn't been obvious I'm on hiatus and probably will stay as such for a while longer. Too many other things to focus on. In fact, I'm thinking about scrapping blogging altogether. I don't get out of it what I used to (primarily because I don't put into it what I used to). Curious: assuming that I stop blogging, how would people react if I just took down the weblog entirely? E.g. any links people had made to old articles would be broken. Is there some etiquette around this? Is there some way to do it politely? re-directs? 60-day lead time? What? From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Yawn! Stretch! Time To Wake Up
Didn't think you were ever gonna see another post here, didja? I've been on self-imposed hiatus for about a year and a half, but this site is still live, still gets hit from some random search queries, and (at least for a while) still got hammered by link spammers. (More on that later.) The real news is I'm back blogging, but not here at good ol' Ten Reasons Why. I'm part of the blogging team for
Blackboard's new blog,
Educate/Innovate. Blackboard is my employe From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Upgraded (And Horked)
Hrm. Well, since I woke up and shook the dust off good ol' Ten Reasons Why, I decided I needed to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of
Movable Type -- specifically, version 3.2. All went well with the upgrade (nice new icons on the admin interface, Six Apart buds), but somewhere along the way I got the bright idea that it would be smart to "refresh" the templates, since the documentation indicates that the new refresh feature would back up the old templates and replace them with the default templates. Eh. Not so much. From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Totally Grittified
grit-ti-fy v. grit-ti-fied, grit-ti-fy-ing, grit-ti-fies v. tr.1. To mangle or complicate an activity beyond recognition, such that it may require the intervention of another to correct. E.g., These Movable Type templates are totally frickin' grittified.[Slang: derived from the IRC username "gritter," itself a derivation of the proper name, "Greg Ritter."] Synonyms:
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
The New Toy
A few days ago, in a fit of consumerism brought on by the anticipation of a tax return, I went out and treated myself to a
Nikon D50 Digital SLR. I'm not the kind of person that makes big purchases easily -- I'd been mulling this one over since last fall. Friends will remember that five years ago it took me nearly 11 months to screw up the courage to go buy a new Honda Civic. A Honda Civic! It's not like it was a Benz or something; it was the epitome of the sensible car pur From
Ten Reasons Why on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Willie Nelson rules
Seems only right that someone sends me
this song link just as the
Gay Straight Alliance finally gets off the ground at Galileo. I chuckled through most of it, but the sadness of that squeeze box and the lyric "You can't fuck with the lady that sleeps in each cowboy's head..." makes it way more than a 'Brokeback' parody. It was wri From
homoLudens III on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Lying liars
From the
BBC re: the latest military action in Iraq: The operation came at a time when support at home for President Bush and his campaign in Iraq is running very low, and when the international media were preparing to focus on the third anniversary of the war, just three days later. From
homoLudens III on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
Congratulations Alan
Alan Levine is off to new adventures:After fourteen years of doing technology ‘stuff’ here at Maricopa, I am making a break to run with a new pack… I have been offered (and accepted today) an excellent opportunity to join the
New Media Consortium, where I will be something like ‘Director of Technology Resources and Member Services’. Whatever the title (like what does ‘Instructional technologist’ really mean?, I’ll take something like ‘web geek’) , it is exciting to be joining a Great Organ From
homoLudens III on April 14, 2006 at 2:46 p.m..
That digital book is right around the digital phone booth corner
Science Fiction author Chiaki Kawamata says: "A high school student wrote to me to tell me that he read 1,000 books in a single summer. There's absolutely no way he could have done that with regular books and without having the novels on his phone instead." It won't be long before there's a PLA (Personal Library Assistant) that makes the Japanese novel-serializing cellphones described in that BBC piece look as out of date as word processing typewriters seem to us today. From
homoLudens III on April 14, 2006 at 2:45 p.m..
If you've got students considering enlistment, read this
According to
Army News Service, "Individual Warriors will be the new label for Soldiers serving in the Individual Ready Reserve." When I got out of the Air Force in '77, the clerk in processing mentioned that I would be eligible for call up until 1983. "You're crazy," I suggested. No he wasn't. Fact is that any recruit signs up for time beyond the 2 or 3 or 4 year enlistment period. In my day, call up was a remote possibility. Now it's a definite "back door" draft. Read the details from
homoLudens III on April 14, 2006 at 2:45 p.m..
Subsistence: A Solid Metal Meal
The buffet of extras in a new double-disc special edition of Metal Gear Solid 3 -- including classic games and an online mode -- make it worth double-dipping. By Chris Kohler. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
Face Reader Bridges Autism Gap
The new Emotional-Social Intelligence Prosthetic could help autistic people understand the mysterious emotional states of other human beings. By Eric Smalley. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
Silicon Valley Goes South
Geeks with money burning holes in their pockets discover a second career in Hollywood. From Forbes.com. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
From Spam to Porn to Art
A New York digital artist takes two oft-despised presences on the internet -- spam and porn -- and turns them into something pretty. Commentary by Regina Lynn. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
All Bets Are Off, Online Anyway
Online gambling is a $12 billion-a-year industry. But making or taking bets from offshore casinos or sportsbooks is a federal crime, and websites that accept advertising from those outfits are looking at hefty penalties. By Rogers Cadenhead. From
Wired News on April 14, 2006 at 6:45 a.m..
Singularity Summit at Stanford
The Singularity Summit at Stanford has the most outstanding lineup of speakers imaginable. The event is FREE. Anybody want to carpool from Berkeley on May 13th? Speaking: Ray Kurzweil Douglas R. Hofstadter Nick Bostrom Sebastian Thrun Cory Doctorow [...] From
Internet Time Blog on April 14, 2006 at 3:45 a.m..